Affinity aPps Get Performance Boost

Performance enhancements and the option of a light UI are among the additions in the latest versions of Affinity’s professional desktop apps.

The new versions 1.6 of the apps are even faster, smoother and more powerful than before. Valuable added features, such as brush stabilisation and enhanced text handling, sit alongside a realm of useful performance tune-ups and improvements.

Ashley Hewson, Managing Director of Affinity developer Serif, said, “Affinity apps are all about enabling you to work faster – whether it’s a quick design draft or photo edit, or a painstaking, complex document involving hundreds of layers or stacked images.

“Our apps are already a trusted part of the workflow for creative professionals around the world. The latest versions build on those proven capabilities to deliver lightning speed, pinpoint accuracy and incredible processing power like never before.”

Affinity Photo and Designer for Mac are available to buy from the App Store, with full optimisation for macOS High Sierra. Windows users can buy direct from Affinity’s website.

Free trials are also available from the website – including for users who have trialled the apps before and were previously unable to download a second trial.

Ashley Hewson added, “People who tried us out before, particularly in the early days, will find that Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer have come a very long way. To acknowledge that, we’re hitting the ‘reset’ button so they can take another look at how we’ve developed.”

The v1.6 update is available free of charge to existing owners of the Affinity desktop apps.

Some of the main improvements and additions in v1.6 are:

New light UI option.

New stroke stabiliser for all pencil and brush tools.

New ‘Edit In’ integration with Apple Photos (Affinity Photo only).

Metal 2 accelerated view optimised for macOS High Sierra.

Improved view pan/zoom performance.

Improved performance with large documents.

New font chooser dropdown with recents, used fonts and favourites.

New Glyph browser.

Align to key items.

Text frame vertical alignment options.

Fit frame to text.

Custom brush wet edges (Affinity Photo only).

Outlier stacking mode (Affinity Photo only).

Improved Photoshop Plugin support (Affinity Photo only).

Improved Live Filters performance (Affinity Photo only).

Many PDF export improvements including vector export of multi-stop gradients.